April 16, 2011
The chair of the government panel on reconstruction from the Great East Japan Disaster in the panel’s first meeting on April 14 recommended the creation of a restoration tax to fund reconstruction programs.
The Reconstruction Design Council, headed by National Defense Academy President Iokibe Makoto, is composed of 15 members, including disaster-stricken prefectures’ leaders, an architect, and a priest, and discusses how to reconstruct disaster-hit areas. The council will publish its first report by the end of June. Based on the council’s findings, the government will draw up its reconstruction plan.
The proposal to create a new tax follows a demand from the business circles.
As a fund to rebuild areas affected by the disaster, the business community is urging the government to ask the general public to shoulder the burden. The Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai) in its urgent appeal concerning the disaster states, “The government should consider calling on the public to bear the cost of reconstruction through introducing a new tax such as a restoration tax.”
It is unacceptable that the government panel, which is supposedly discussing the issue of reconstruction by combining the nation’s wisdom, proposes to impose another tax burden on the public to fulfill the business circle’s demands.
The Japanese Communist Party argues that the government must fully review its budget expenditures by cancelling tax cuts for big businesses and the wealthy and the payment of the so-called “sympathy budget” for the U.S. forces in Japan. The JCP also demands that the government issue reconstruction bonds and have large corporations purchase the bond by using some of their enormous internal reserves.
The Reconstruction Design Council, headed by National Defense Academy President Iokibe Makoto, is composed of 15 members, including disaster-stricken prefectures’ leaders, an architect, and a priest, and discusses how to reconstruct disaster-hit areas. The council will publish its first report by the end of June. Based on the council’s findings, the government will draw up its reconstruction plan.
The proposal to create a new tax follows a demand from the business circles.
As a fund to rebuild areas affected by the disaster, the business community is urging the government to ask the general public to shoulder the burden. The Japan Association of Corporate Executives (Keizai Doyukai) in its urgent appeal concerning the disaster states, “The government should consider calling on the public to bear the cost of reconstruction through introducing a new tax such as a restoration tax.”
It is unacceptable that the government panel, which is supposedly discussing the issue of reconstruction by combining the nation’s wisdom, proposes to impose another tax burden on the public to fulfill the business circle’s demands.
The Japanese Communist Party argues that the government must fully review its budget expenditures by cancelling tax cuts for big businesses and the wealthy and the payment of the so-called “sympathy budget” for the U.S. forces in Japan. The JCP also demands that the government issue reconstruction bonds and have large corporations purchase the bond by using some of their enormous internal reserves.
